Workers Solidarity Movement Irish Anarchist Review #8 - Why I became an anarchist - Russia / Georgia / Greece / Ireland

As is the case with most of my comrades, I did not suddenly wake up to find out that I am 
an anarchist. It was rather a gradual process that started with a determination to fight 
racism, challenge patriarchy and doubt the existence of some omnipresent old man with 
white beard. ---- I was born in 1987 to a Russian mother and a Georgian father in Siberia 
during the last years of the USSR and spent most of my childhood travelling back and forth 
between Russia and Georgia, changing different cities and schools and meeting people who 
were very eager to prove to me how much of a better nation Georgia is in comparison to 
Russia and vice versa. What affected my ideology the most was my family?s decision to move 
to Greece where I got to meet many interesting people and during the last years of school 
together with friends to start reading books on atheism, feminism and anarchy.

The reasons for which I consider myself an anarchist, have to do with my belief that every 
human being regardless of their ethnicity, gender, colour, religion etc., should be able 
to enjoy equal rights in every part of the world; something that is obviously not the case 
at the moment and never will be unless something is done to change it. And the reason I do 
not consider state Communism to be a political system worth fighting for is, apart from 
the fact that any form of hierarchy is unacceptable to me (especially the one that gives 
absolutely no option to express any different thought that challenges the way society 
works) the fact that in a communist society where my parents lived, even though they both 
had the same responsibilities as far as their working hours and conditions were concerned, 
my father enjoyed much more freedom in his everyday life then my mother did.

Moreover, as a migrant in Greece, a country with many migrants and even more problems, I 
had to learn to get used to being the ?other? who is an easy target to blame for 
everything by the state, should it be a left wing party or a right wing one, as well as by 
the media who would always try their best to emphasise the nationality of a burglar should 
it be a non-Greek one. In this society I was extremely lucky to meet people for whom 
categorizing human beings according to their race, among other things, was unacceptable 
and while we were helping migrants to learn Greek in our migrant language school with a 
symbolic name ?Odysseus?, we ourselves were learning from our students and from each other 
how meaningless and superficial these categorisations are.

For the last two years I have been living in Ireland where apart from the racism and class 
issues, to a lot of people, a woman?s life is of less value to that of a fetus. Something 
that, together with every other less or more important issue I witness on a daily basis 
makes me more confident to believe that the only way people can live in a more just world 
is to stand in solidarity with each other and fight for everyone?s rights whether it 
affects us or not.

Words: Nephele

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